Verbatim Clip-It Is A Flash Drive That Doubles As Paper Clip

Out of paper clips again? Get the USB thumbdrives. Not just any thumbdrive, though - we're talking about Verbatim's Clip-It, a USB drive that creatively doubles as a humble office staple.

A winner at the 2010 Red Dot Design Awards, the peripheral can clamp on to your piles of documents, hordes of business cards and stacks of cash like any regular paper clip. Then when you're done, you can slip it into your co-worker's USB port too, so you can copy that ISO of Civilization 5 he torrented during office hours. Just a note: that game is awesome.

Designed by Arman Emami, the Verbatim Clip-It is shaped like a paper clip, with one end meant to be used as a regular USB key. Small and light, it works great both as a clip for binding sheets of paper together or as a functional flash drive. It's made from plastic and comes in a variety of colors: black, white, yellow, green, pink, blue and orange.

Why use a USB flash drive as a paper clip? According to the company, the idea is to organize physical and digital documents in one bundle, without having to dump them on an envelope. That way, you can hand out business cards with a flash drive clipped onto it that contains detailed information about your company, or leave both hard and soft copies of reports on your supervisor's desk, among other possible uses.

The Verbatim Clip-It should be available in Europe soon, in 2G and 4GB capacities. Prices start at £6.99.